The Intensified Push For 'State Of Palestine' With E Jerusalem As Capital

Biden’s Road to Riyadh Runs Through Jerusalem

Stan Goodenough

The currency for securing Saudi Arabia’s cooperation with the US is an intensified American push for the creation of a State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.

US President Joe Biden is coming to Israel, after all. He is set to be in the Middle East from July 13 to 16. Following the earlier postponement of his visit, this week’s news trajectory told the tale:

• On Sunday, June 12, “a fuming” Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman messaged Washington that he was poised to downgrade ties with Israel; Biden’s visit had better sort Israel out.

• On Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett conceded that his toppling government might be about to collapse.

• On Tuesday, the White House announced that Biden had settled on the dates for his visit.

• On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid expressed his view that Biden will come even if Israel’s coalition collapses. The Israel-US relationship surpasses politics, was his view.

• News media reported that the president’s trip will include visits to the PA and to Saudi Arabia.

• Then we heard that Washington is pressuring Israel to not take any unilateral steps that will anger the Palestinian Arabs before Biden comes.

In the face of all this, The Jerusalem Post nonetheless opined that there was no need to overstate the relevance of the first leg of the trip. “Biden’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority is just a sideshow. Saudi Arabia is the main event…”

Hardly. Israel is no sideshow. Biden’s visit is no stopover. It is without question tightly tied to what for decades has been the main event on the global agenda for the Middle East: Creating Palestine.

This is not to suggest that the visit to Saudi Arabia is just window dressing. The unparalleled (and for Americans, frightening) $5.00 per gallon of gas charge at the pump thanks to the Russian-Ukrainian war; Iran’s mockery of the failed US-led effort to prevent it crossing the nuclear threshold, which has heightened the need to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords; and not forgetting America’s desire to restore something of its depleted influence in the Middle East — all this is hardly insignificant.

But the road to Riyadh passes through Jerusalem. The currency for securing Saudi Arabia’s cooperation and participation is not only the prospect of improved US-Saudi relations with all the goodies that brings; it is the visibly intensified American push for the creation of a Palestinian state in “the West Bank” with “East Jerusalem” as its capital. Or, more accurately — the establishment of a Muslim-Arab country in Israel’s biblical and ancestral heartland — Samaria and Judea — with half of Israel’s united capital appropriated as well.

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